The team at Shopanthropic wishes you and your loved ones a very Happy Holiday season, filled with love and laughter, and a Happy New Year, with the promise of hope and joy!

2017 has been a year of of growth, promising ideas and beautiful ethical fashion! We are excited to continue forging ahead in 2018 – as we help make the world a little kinder and a little more fashionable.

With Halloween just around the corner, retail stores are already filling up with gifting ideas for your loved ones for the holiday season. This is a great time to remind the special people in your lives what they mean to you – whether that be through goods, gestures or words. This is also a good time to think sustainable.

As you pick out the perfect gifts – consider where and how the product has been produced, what materials it is made up of and the impact its disposal will have on the environment. Consider fair trade and sustainable brands to replace fast fashion products. Share the stories behind the brands and products you support.

Think about how you can use your dollar to not only improve the lives of others, but make a sustainable, long-lasting difference. This holiday season we encourage you to shop ethical, shop wisely and enable change everywhere.

Fashion companies’ websites are a rhetorical jungle of vague, virtuous-sounding self-description. As they boast of “ethical sourcing” and “positive impact,” the companies seek to reassure consumers and investors of brands’ commitments to “transparency” and “sustainability” — two of the most fashionable buzzwords in modern marketing.

Apparel makers lack a common definition of what constitutes “sustainability,” “transparency” or “ethical sourcing.” And in the absence of a uniform standard, each company can assess its ethical record independently and is free to give themselves all the accolades they like.

But that rewards clever marketing and storytelling, not actual monitoring and accountability — and leaves consumers without any way of discerning between brands that meet high labour standards and those that only talk about it.

As a recent report by the Human Rights Watch explains, supply chain transparency practices vary immensely among apparel companies. Many pick and choose what details to publish about their labour and human rights practices. Others refuse to publish supplier factory information at all.

The majority of companies measure the effort they’re making — touting their own policies or codes of conduct — but stop short of assessing whether those efforts are delivering their promised effects, according to new research by New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “Having strong policies in place around workplace safety or wages is important, but it does not guarantee that workers are in fact safe and adequately paid,” said Casey O’Connor, who co-authored the report.

That leaves consumers in the dark about the type of labour standards they’re supporting.

“It’s very hard to distinguish,” said Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, research director at NYU’s Center for Business and Human Rights. “The facade looks identical.”

The problem has gained new visibility with revelations of the poor labour conditions in factories making clothing and shoes for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line. The factories severely underpaid workers and forced them to work excessive overtime, according to activists for China Labor Watch who made headlines when they were arrested by the Chinese government. The watchdog had previously alerted the brand to alleged labour abuses, which it ignored.

This wasn’t the first time: the Fair Labor Association also found that another factory making Ivanka products was in violation of two dozen international labour standards, and paid its workers little more than a dollar an hour.

Though Trump’s company lags behind other big brands, it is hardly alone.

Less than two decades ago, major apparel companies didn’t reveal any information about their supplier factories. That began to change after Nike came under scrutiny in the late 1990s for abusive labour practices. Phil Knight, then-chief executive, bemoaned that the brand had “become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse.” By 2005, Nike and Adidas published names and addresses of all their factories. Patagonia, Levi Strauss and Puma followed suit.

But transparency alone isn’t enough, Baumann-Pauly warned. She thinks the obsession with the word has led companies to conflate transparency with accountability. “You can disclose lots of information, but is it the right information to hold factories to account? And is there someone who picks up that information and acts on it?”

Frameworks for universal standards already exist.

The International Labor Organization (ILO), a U.N. agency founded in 1919 as part of the League of Nations, creates and maintains a system of international labour standards that set out basic principles and rights of work. Monitoring mechanisms exist too.

The Fair Labor Association (FLA), a non-profit formed in 1999 as a collaborative effort of universities, civil society organizations and businesses, evolved out of a task force created by President Bill Clinton in the wake of child labour and sweatshop scandals. It uses the standards of the ILO to monitor companies’ supply chains and protect workers. Participating companies sign up to a two or three-year implementation schedule, after which they open up their factory doors to the FLA for evaluation.

“We evaluate the action on the ground, the internal systems, the conditions for workers, against the benchmarks,” said Sharon Waxman, the FLA’s president. If companies meet the standards, they are accredited — a process that must be renewed every three years with new evaluations.

The problem is that FLA accreditation has yet to go mainstream. Just 23 apparel and footwear companies are currently accredited. Twenty-seven others are seeking accreditation — but this is still just a fraction of an industry whose firms number in the thousands.

Meanwhile, the current system allows companies to continue profiting off exploited labourers.

Many brands, claiming to self-monitor, focus only on factories with which they have direct agreements and ignore the back chain of unauthorized subcontracting to smaller factories. In the wake of the 2013 collapse of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza building, in which more than 1,100 workers died, more than 200 brands signed up for the Bangladesh Accord and the Alliance for Bangladesh Workplace Safety, committing to improving safety standards by summer 2018.

Yet these initiatives, aimed at ensuring factory safety, cover only about 2,000 out of 8,000 garment factories in the country, according to a study by BRAC University in Dhaka. That means approximately 3 million workers toil in factories that fall outside Bangladesh’s monitoring and remediation mechanisms.

“These brands know,” Baumann-Pauly said. “They give out orders that exceed the capacity of the facility they audit. It’s a known secret.”

An assessment by NYU Stern has found that four years later, only 79 factories have passed third-party inspections set up by the Accord and the Alliance. The rest remain critically behind schedule for fixing structural, fire and electrical issues.

Genuine commitment to sustainability — rather than merely the show of it — requires monitoring of the entire supply chain and a willingness to meet internationally recognized standards. For most brands, this is still more than they’re ready to do. Pressure from the public and from companies that do meet the standards could change that.”

Reposted from The Blog in the Huffington Post by Meera Solanki Estrada, Fashion & Culture Expert:

“Just the way we play with new looks and don’t always jump in both feet wet, same goes with eco-fashion.

The fashion industry is notorious for being resource intensive. From water usage, pesticides, sweatshops to textile waste — we are tearing at the seams when it comes to sustainable concerns associated with the world of style. Yet surprisingly, it’s not uncommon to get an eye roll or glazed-over gaze at the mention of eco-fashion. Why?

Never mind that we are living in the era of Trump — when political correctness and caring for the environment are suddenly sore points of scorn — but many simply see “sustainability” as yet another buzzword, something too leftie tree-hugger for their liking.

FashionTakesAction.com

There’s also this perceived workload in buying sustainable clothing and joining the movement which deters many people away from it — too daunting a task to neatly fit into one’s stylish sensibility. That’s two strikes against the sustainable style movement and we’re barely getting started. Tough sell — literally.

Admittedly, I didn’t pay much attention to sustainability in fashion until a couple of years ago when I started forging closer relationships with more Canadian designers and really understanding exactly where and how my clothes were being made. And full disclosure, I still don’t have an exclusively eco-fashion wardrobe, but I am certainly more conscious of my choices, and that’s a start.

“Eco has held a heavy, all-inclusive concept to date but we need to understand there is a spectrum and we don’t have to be ‘completely eco.’ Every little bit helps… Taking action is what we need to do even if we are still trying to figure out how to create a healthy fashion industry, because it is the first time we are challenging the way it’s always been done.“

TWFW

How you can support sustainable fashion

Just the way we play with new looks and don’t always jump in both feet wet, same goes with eco-fashion. You can make small changes towards sustainable style. Every action has impact.

A few simple ways to work sustainable fashion into your look are:

1. Buy natural fibres: Cotton and bamboo are two examples of natural fibers that make great fabrics and clothes.

2. Upcycle: Re-fashion your apparel. Little Grey Line takes old men’s work shirts and remakes them into adorable dresses for little girls. You can also give it a try at home. Just find a great shirt and create your own custom design for your mini-me.

3.Do some DIY: YouTube lately? Even those that can’t work a needle and thread for the life of them (myself included) have learned some pretty cool hacks and can work magic on old wares with some viral video inspiration

4. Shop and swap your closet: Whether it’s a swishing party with your colleagues or swapping pieces with your sis, a simple closet swap instantly adds new life to your wardrobe. You can also take it to the next level by renting pieces from your closet. East or West, you got options. “Take My Sari is a new app dedicated to renting as well as buying and selling Indian fashions.

5. Do some research: There are so amazing eco-friendly brands out there. Get on Google and find something that suits your style. You may find that even one of your favourite designers, like Stella McCartney, has an eco-chic line.

FashionTakesAction.com

Canada’s Sustainable Fashion Awards

There is a steadily growing group of talented eco-friendly designers in Canada, and celebrating them is a step in the right direction. Fashion Takes Action’s Design Forward, a sustainable runway show featuring the top designers in Canada puts them to the test for the first time this year. All of the designers featured beautiful workmanship. The three finalists included Peggy Sue Collection, Triarchy and Omi Woods.

Know who made your clothes

Part of better understanding sustainable style is getting to know the designers behind the brands and what they stand for. Ethics play a key role in many of these brands’ philosophies. From the use of eco-friendly dyes andusing natural, local materials to their fullest extent to working directly with the farmers and artisans involved in making the clothes to ensure fair wages, strong ethics are at the core of many eco brands. Many do not mass produce. They keep a small inventory and only make what is ordered so your product is that much more unique and their manufacturing practices have less of an impact on the earth. Knowing how and where your clothes are made is all part of making you a more conscious consumer.Know who made your clothes”

In this blog, the author has written an excellent piece on steps that you and I can take to support a movement towards slow and sustainable fashion:

“Promoting fair wages and minimal waste, slow and sustainable fashion demands change in the way we perceive clothing”

A friend of this writer once said, “I will just have to reconcile with children in sweatshops making the clothes I wear; after all, who can argue with cheaper prices more affordable.” Needless to say, the listener was horrified. With increasing awareness, more people are now making an effort to live less wasteful lives—yet we sometimes fall woefully short when it comes to clothing choices.

This is the age of fast fashion—trends change every few weeks, or less, and brands keep up by churning out new designs at alarming speed.

Fashion has, over the years become associated with excess and frivolity but beneath the surface the simple fact is that clothing is essential to our lives. There is much to value about fashion (and that is a subject for an entirely different article) but some of its trends and practices can certainly be changed for the better.

Slow fashion is slowly (pun intended) taking over, and its principles are simple—fair wages, eco-friendly fabrics and practices, and minimal to zero waste. But it does demand change in the way we perceive clothing.

From keeping your shopping habits in control to knowing about the supply chain of your favoured brands, a conscious interest in your clothes—and their makers—not only has a positive impact on the environment but also the communities engaged in the production of clothing. Here is what you can do to be part of the slow and sustainable fashion movement.

1. Reduce your wardrobe to only what you need and love

To begin with, keep your shopping habits in check. Retail therapy may be happiness-inducing, but its long-term effect usually includes a pile of unused clothes in our wardrobes. Instead, shop with discretion and buy only what you need or like enough to wear often.
If an occasion demands an ensemble that you will never wear otherwise, consider borrowing or use clothing rentals, an emerging trend that some suggest will pose a grave threat to fast fashion brands in the future.

2. Your choice of materials makes a difference

Take cotton for instance, a crop that is both water- and chemical-intensive. In the ongoing drought across numerous states of India, cotton farmers are among the hardest-hit.

However, organic cotton is gaining ground—not only does it require less water but also substantially less chemicals. On the other hand, Ahimsa or vegan silks are becoming popular as conventional silks raise questions about boiling silkworms to produce the threads. Handspun khadi and traditional techniques are being revived and internationally, bamboo, recycled fabrics and hemp are becoming popular over synthetics.

3. Say no to sweatshops, breeding grounds of labour exploitation

Cheap clothing always a welcome addition to wardrobes, but it often comes at great human cost. In 2013, Rana Plaza in Bangladesh collapsed in a heap, killing 1,134 people all of whom were making clothes for international brands under strenuous conditions. And this is not a stray incident—news reports frequently bring the exploitative working conditions in sweatshops to light.

If a brand, no matter how aspirational or abounding in gorgeous clothes, is repeatedly in the news for malpractices, ditch them for fair-trade labels or factories that conform to regulations for workers safety and other standards.

If enough people refuse to invest in such brands, the industry will be compelled to regulate the measures for workers’ welfare.

4. Ask this: Who made my clothes?

The previous point naturally leads to this one. Remember that prices aren’t the overriding factor in determining whether your clothes are sustainable or not — a great deal of luxury products aren’t always ethical and many surprisingly cheap products often are. It is important to check the supply chain of the brand you purchase from and most importantly, pose the question, “Who made my clothes?”

5. Buy local, and support fair-trade and craft clusters that practice sustainable techniques

Buying local keeps your carbon footprint lower—after all, your clothes haven’t travelled the world to reach your wardrobe. Second, it is a means of sustenance for local weavers and artisans. India is home to countless handlooms and crafts and unfortunately, many of them are dwindling. These karigars need patronage and support for their craft traditions to continue. Many shoppers are ditching big brands for handlooms and old techniques are being revived by designers and organisations to be relevant in contemporary times.

6. How you use your clothes affects your carbon footprint

Washing and drying your clothes might keep them clean, but also increases your carbon footprint and reduces the lifespan of your clothes drastic. Now the solutions: use non-toxic detergent, hand wash as much as possible and remember that air drying is better than the spin tub.
Most of all, wear your clothes more than once before washing. In a tropical country, this can be challenging especially in the heat, but choosing airy fabrics and air drying them can solve the problem to some extent.

7. Finally: recycle, upcycle and donate

While many of us are increasingly conscious about the immortality of plastic, landfills are also choked by immense quantities of clothing.While organuc fabrics are bio-degradable, synthetics may not be so. There’s also the questions of plastic and other non bio-degradable items that make their way into clothing via buttons, zips and other fixtures.

Instead of tossing old clothes, considering repairing them or donating to someone in need. A number of NGOs and other organisations can make use of old clothes in crafting refurbished products as well.

This wasn’t unusual. The company, which aims to make fashion a more sustainable, ethical, and transparent industry, is built largely on comprehensive investigations into the supply chains of different brands, the results of which they share on theironline wiki. Ivanka Trump was an obvious subject in light of boycotts led byGrabYourWallet, which may or may not have causedNordstromandNeiman Marcusto back away from the line. Plus, community users had specifically requested the investigation. The reason it was unusual — enough to warrant a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation process itself — was that they found nothing.

Project Just discovered no code of ethics, no sustainability reports, no human rights policies.

With five researchers working in six countries over the course of a month, and despite contacting spokespeople, sales reps, and brand employees, Project Just discovered no code of ethics, no sustainability reports, no human rights policies. A shipping list pointed tofactories in China and Indonesia, but no factories were at the addresses, and calls to the phone numbers listed went unanswered. The 12-employee business offers paid maternity leave to new mothers, but revealed no policies ensuring fair wages, safe working conditions, or health care to the women working at every other level of manufacturing — despite Ivanka Trump’s emphasis on empowering working women. Project Just uncovered no evidence that the brand (whose manufacturing and distribution is handled by licensing group G-III Apparel) knows anything that goes on within its own supply chain — or, at least, is willing to share what it knows.”

In the last 50 years, the way we produce and consume fashion has dramatically changed. Fast fashion retailers have made the case that they have democratised the fashion experience – no longer reserved for the elite, fashion is available and accessible to all. Everyone can afford to wear the latest trends, and to regularly experience the short-lived high of a new fashion purchase, and the pleasure of wearing something new.

For large fashion retailers “fashion democracy” has happily coincided with burgeoning sales, revenues, and profits. This has become the model that dominates High Streets, certainly in the UK and the US, and increasingly elsewhere. On the surface it seems to suit everyone – certainly those who have buying power and thus influence in a market-driven business model.

A Divided Industry

In my ten years of growing the Ethical Fashion Forum, I have seen a movement gather pace against fast fashion as the status quo. This has coincided, particularly in the last 5 years, with several of the most established High St retailers outwardly and publicly committing to sustainability targets and goals, and investing in innovation to solve sustainability challenges.

Especially for independent brands for whom sustainability is part of their DNA, this development is an uneasy one. Competition with the High St, and consumer perceptions of what fashion “should” cost, are already probably the biggest challenges they face. Now they face competition on their sustainability values too – from companies with the ability to allocate, in relative terms, enormous budgets towards the communication of their sustainability commitments.

In many ways, we have reached a stand-off between these two fashion industry camps – a stand-off that drives heated debate in every fashion industry forum, and much frustration. Yet, the challenges of sustainability are common to all of us, to every fashion consumer and to every business owner. Fast fashion is not going any where fast, so how can we unite the most creative minds of this industry, the pioneering thinkers and actors, towards positive solutions that unite rather than divide us?

I recently had the opportunity to join the brilliant Catarina Midby, Sustainability Manager at H&M, for a discussion on fast fashion on Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. It inspired me to write this article – sharing my latest thinking on fast fashion from the unique position that the Ethical Fashion Forum has given me, as the “eyes and ears” of our industry.

What Is “Fast Fashion”?

Initially “fast fashion” was about increasing the speed of production, reducing the time it takes to go from fashion design to final product on shelves. Rather than two collections annually, this made it possible to have new product in store in multiple drops throughout the year. The ultimate goal being to sell more product and decrease the trend cycle – and to have something new that consumers need to get in their wardrobes every few weeks in order to be in line with latest trends.

This went hand in hand with reduced prices; it is psychologically easier to make a purchase at a lower price point. There is evidence that consumers will spend more over a year with regular low cost “fashion fixes” than on more exclusive pieces that they fall in love with and will treasure. With a higher cost item, it is so much easier to see what is going out of the bank. In addition, there is that trait many of us have of feeling guilty about indulging – spending on ourselves (or at least, admitting to it). As a result, we’ve developed a “bargain boast” culture – where we boast about how great a bargain we got, and how little we paid. Bargains make it feel okay to buy a new dress (or 3…) every week, if each one only cost £24.99. (or £4.99…)

Now fast fashion is less about fast production – regular drops, rather than seasonal collections have become the standard on the High St – and more about sales – how much product can be shifted, and how quickly. Shifting product quickly means producing a lot of stuff at as low a price as possible, which puts pressure on suppliers to make huge volumes at a low price to tight deadlines. That pressure caused Rana Plaza in 2013.

Sustainable Fast Fashion

At the Ethical Fashion Forum, we define sustainable fashion as an approach to fashion that maximises benefits to people, and minimises impact on the environment.

Can fast fashion be sustainable? At the Ethical Fashion Forum, we define sustainable fashion as an approach to fashion that maximises benefits to people, and minimises impact on the environment.

We believe that the social and environmental aspects of sustainability are inherently linked; one does not come without the other.

Let’s start with the environment. The single most effective thing we could do tomorrow to reduce the impact of the fashion industry on the environment would be to buy a lot less. Every garment has an environmental footprint at every stage in its production. That is why there is an inherent contradiction between the fast fashion business model – a model driven by selling lots of stuff fast – and the concept of environmental sustainability.

I’ve seen as much passion and dedication from individuals working within fast fashion retailers, championing more sustainable practices, as amongst smaller business pioneers. The difference being that the fast fashion insiders have, in many ways, a tougher challenge because the commercial drivers of the businesses they work within are in conflict with reducing environmental impact. For me, this conflict represents the heart of the problem we need to address as an industry – it is the “elephant in the room”. It cannot be resolved by any business working alone, and it will not be resolved through stand-off. If all parties truly acknowledge this elephant in the room, here lies an opportunity for constructive debate.

When it comes to benefits to people, the case for fast fashion is easier to defend. Take Bangladesh as an example – a primary production hub for fast fashion retailers globally. In the last 30 years we have seen huge gains, especially for women in Bangladesh, who have been able to exit a cycle of poverty for themselves and their families, largely through the mass manufacture of clothing. By 2013 about 4 million people, mostly women, worked in Bangladesh’s $19 billion-a-year, export-oriented, ready-made garment (RMG) industry. Several pioneering fast fashion retailers have developed exemplary initiatives in their supply chains to improve working conditions, support communities, and empower their workers, in Bangladesh and beyond.

Despite this, from the observer standpoint, we see more column inches and campaign focus from large retailers on the environmental message, even though there is an inherent contradiction in it. I see great value in more promotional space being given by large retailers to the benefits to people through more sustainable and conscious fashion.

Quality of Life, Fulfilling Work, and Society Values

Historically, the production of textiles and clothes has been highly creative, highly skilled, and offered opportunities for fulfilling and meaningful work.

‘Maximising benefits to people’ through sustainable fashion business has strategic implications that go beyond whether a factory is clean and safe, and even whether workers are paid a living wage.

From the silk route in China to the sought-after textiles and embroidery of Thailand, Indonesia, and India, for thousands of years this industry and its products have inspired wonder and driven global trade. The process of consuming textiles and fashion, right into the 1960s and 70s, was also a creative one – people would often sew their own clothes, or pay a seamstress to create something unique to them that would be treasured and passed on (supplying the growing market for vintage fashion today).

In contrast, the majority of work in garment factories supplying fast fashion retailers is repetitive, tedious, low-skilled, and the opposite of fulfilling.

The process of buying fashion consumes hundreds of hours, and often, most Saturdays (and Sundays) especially for teenagers and young people, wherever they have disposable income and access to a High St (or computer). All this, so we can have wardrobes full of cheap clothes, most of which ends in landfill? If we were to step back and strategically plan our industry to maximise benefits for people on both sides of the supply chain, I am sure we would come up with something very different.

Fast Fashion Culture

Shifting a lot of fashion product fast – and making high margins as a result – means it makes sense to invest a lot of money in advertising, which pervades every part of our media from print, to billboard, TV, and alongside everything we browse online. As members of a consumer society, we are presented with two big messages: what we need to aspire to look like, and that we can all afford to do so. So go shopping!

As the mother of two girls I see the effects of this first hand. At 9 years old my daughter is already concerned about body image; despite her perfect proportions, she does not conform with what she is told to aspire to. Already, her thoughts are occupied with what she could and should wear, with when she can next go shopping. She has brilliant intelligence and spirit, and her creativity from the age of 9 could be addressing much more fulfilling and meaningful tasks than what to wear.

We as a society – and as a business community – can change this.

Is Closed Loop The Antidote to Fast Fashion?

Closed Loop – or a “circular production model” – is an exciting and innovative concept, and one which illustrates the opportunities for collaboration between small and larger business in the fashion sector. A circular production model means that the end product is entirely recycled and transformed back into the original fibres and other components so that it can be recreated again, as good as new. The vision of a circular model is that it will be almost entirely zero waste, massively reducing the environmental footprint of a mass production model.

Can a circular model then “fix” the environmental challenges with fast fashion – the elephant in the room – and let us get on with business as usual? There is no question that this is a fundamental component to a more sustainable industry. However, I would argue that this is not an antidote. A circular model, within a fast fashion context, addresses the symptoms of the problem – waste and burgeoning energy consumption – rather than the cause (our addiction to buying and selling vast quantities of low cost products).

Circular Fashion, launched by Swedish Consultancy firm Green Strategy, sets out an excellent synopsis of Key Principles associated with a Circular Fashion Model. At the top of this list are “Design with a Purpose” and “Design for Longevity” – both principles which do not sit easily with our low-cost, fashion-fix culture.

Positive Steps Towards A More Sustainable Industry

I’ve sat through countless industry events and round tables where the challenges of our industry are discussed. In the last 5 years, the “elephant in the room” is being increasingly exposed. However, I am sure that if you have been to an industry forum on fashion and sustainability, you will share my frustration. There is far more discussion of problems than focus on solutions.

Yet, it is the solutions that need the full focus of the great thinkers in our industry – from both sides of the fast fashion divide. If we are to address the root of the problems with our industry – and go beyond treating the symptoms – we need to see more New Leadership.

John Kenneth Galbraith defined great leadership as “The willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time.” If Climate change is the greatest anxiety of our time, confronting it will require a radical change in the way we produce and consume fashion.

Doing Fast Fashion Better

We have seen leadership amongst fast fashion retailers which can, and is, significantly increasing benefits to people and reducing impact on the environment. Doing fast fashion better is a fundamental first step towards change.

I see 4 ways in which meaningful impact can be achieved:

1. Acknowledging The Elephant in The Room

I have been a part of too many industry forums where percentage reduction in water or energy use are discussed in the same breath as expansion plans to open 3 new stores during the same period – and increase production and sales to match. A combined strategy which results in a considerably increased environmental footprint overall, rendering the percentage reductions almost pointless. For me, doing fast fashion better means sharing the full picture – evaluating sustainability proposals, and planning and reporting on impact in the context of a growth model. It’s time to stop ignoring the elephant.

2. Operating in 3 Dimensions

Too often, professionals within fashion businesses are incentivised against improving social or environmental standards. Their commercial Key Performance Indicators are in opposition to the recommendations of the CSR department and CSR does not have representation at board level. Wherever we see sustainability targets being taken seriously in High Street Fashion, sustainability management sits alongside financial management and this approach filters across the business so that each department is empowered rather than being frustrated by its impact targets. (Hats off to H&M on this point). I would like to see this leadership and commitment strengthened through more fashion businesses following the leadership of Patagonia and registering as B Corporations. The B Corp movement can and will move our industry towards a 3-Dimensional model (We’re talking to you, H&M and Kering!).

From an observer’s perspective, we hear more about the environmental initiatives of large fashion retailers, even though this doesn’t sit easily within a fast fashion model. I would like to see and hear much more from leading retailers on what fashion, made well, can do for people behind the product. I would like to see more real commitment to paying living wages and empowering workers. I would like to see advertising budgets raising awareness about the value of skills and craftsmanship, and how consumers can positively influence the well-being of the people behind fashion by buying well.

What do you know about the clothes in your wardrobe? About the clothes that you’re wearing right now? Clara Vuletich works with some of the biggest brands in the world to help them ask the right questions about where the clothes that we wear come from.

When Indian Textiles Minister Smriti Irani tweeted a picture of herself this week in an electric-blue silk saree with the hashtag #IWearHandloom, her tweet was favourited more than 10,000 times.

Handloom is making the leap to high fashion

Hundreds responded to Irani’s request to post pictures of themselves in handloom clothes, including politicians, actors, athletes, models and designers, ahead of National Handloom Day yesterday to celebrate the humble hand-woven fabric.

A symbol of India’s freedom struggle, handloom attire was once regarded as fit only for politicians and villagers.

It is now seeing a revival, with demand growing for sustainable and ethical fashion, even as mass-market clothing still dominates malls and pavement stalls. “There’s a greater desire among the youth and the middle class, who are frustrated with dirty politics for something better,” said Arvind Singhal, chief executive of retail consultancy Technopak Advisors.

“Having a greater ­sensitivity to people and the environment is ‘in’, and people are even ­willing to pay a small premium for what they perceive to be ethical and responsible,” he said.

India is among the biggest manufacturers of textiles and apparel in the world, supplying leading international brands. But the domestic market is large too, and accounts for more than 40pc of the industry’s revenue.

The sector is dominated by small and medium-sized firms under enormous pressure to reduce costs and produce garments quickly. Many use forced labour, while abuses ­including withheld salaries and debt ­bondage are rife, activists say.

Wages in India’s textile and garment industry are about $1.06 an hour, compared with $2.60 in China, according to the World Bank.

The pressure on margins trickles down to cotton farmers. More than 90pc of cotton in India is genetically modified, and as those seeds cannot be replanted, farmers have struggled with rising input costs and lower prices for cotton. Tens of thousands of indebted cotton farmers in the western state of Maharashtra have killed themselves in the past two decades.

It was the plight of these farmers that drove Apurva Kothari, who was working in technology in San Francisco, to return to India and set up apparel brand No Nasties in 2011.

The company sources organic cotton, and audits its supply chain to ensure there is no child labour and that workers receive fair wages, he said.

No Nasties and Do U Speak Green are among a handful of Fairtrade-licensed clothing brands in India. They source from producers including Rajlakshmi Cotton Mills, which deals in organic and fair trade cotton and pays fair wages, and Chetna Organic, whose seed conservation project has organic “seedbanks” from which farmers can withdraw seeds.

They are getting a boost from Fairtrade India, which set up office in 2013, and has stamped its distinct circular logo on a small range of products including tea, coffee, rice and sugar.

Working conditions and ­wages in South Asia’s garment industry have come under greater scrutiny since the April 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, in which more than 1,100 workers died. But retailers’ efforts to clean up supply chains will have little impact unless consumers in India demand more ethically produced goods, analysts say.

“Most buyers are oblivious to farmer suicides or unfair wages, and don’t make that connection to the clothes they wear,” said Abhishek Jani, chief executive of Fairtrade India. “But there is clearly a segment that cares, and all things being equal, more people would probably buy an ethical product if the price point isn’t too high.” (Reuters)

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The Bay & Harbour Blog

Bay & Harbour is the brainchild of a Toronto-based mother/daughter team with an eye for trend-setting, unique and high-quality fashion & lifestyle products.

The pair is inspired by different cultures, handicraft techniques, discrete designs, and fashion trends from their travels around the world. Bay & Harbour as their outlet to share that love of design with others.

The Bay & Harbour collections feature a variety of accessories & lifestyle products for both men & women.

The co-founders are passionate about fashion with a cause. Many of the Bay & Harbour collections also include pieces that are sustainable and / or ethically made.